


Creaks

by stickylips14



Series: The Watcher: Side Stories [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, POV First Person, Possession, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Supernatural Elements, Vomiting, this is like a slice of life if ur life involved spirits and demons constantly ruining it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 05:57:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11937777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickylips14/pseuds/stickylips14
Summary: There is no rest for the wicked, and even less for the people determined to put an end to it.





	Creaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yoshirueme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoshirueme/gifts).



> Thank you to my lovely friend Yosh for all of the support, and thank you so much for commissioning me!!
> 
> Set roughly six months after the events of [The Watcher](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10586973/chapters/23399739) and there ARE spoilers so if you haven't read The Watcher but would like to, do that first!

I find Keith in the living room, pacing slowly in shuffling, sleepy steps after having woken up in an apartment entirely devoid of noise, except for the kind of creaking that comes from someone walking over old floorboards- a sound that was not possible in my apartment, given that its foundations were all made from concrete. Panic had filled up my throat like vomit the moment I realized that Keith was not in bed beside me and in the dark, tripping over the boxes of his things that were yet to be unpacked, I searched for him, and I found him, walking back and forth in complete darkness. I could only make out his faint silhouette, the light coming through the blinds giving him a silver outline, but that was all I needed. I would know Keith even if I were blind and deaf. I called out to him, the dark making my voice small the way that it always did, and his slow steps hesitated for a moment, and then carried on. I waited a moment before I ran my hand along the wall and turned on the light, the sudden change from black to bright making me squint.

Keith’s pacing stopped immediately and he stood in the middle of the living room dressed in one of my work shirts that hung loose on him, his eyes glassy and staring forward. He seemed slack, listless. Unaware of his surroundings and I approached him with a great deal of caution all while I felt my chest restricting, like my lungs were slowly being squeezed from inside of my chest cavity, a stranger’s hands trying to choke the life out of me.

“Keith…?” I called again as I raised a hand to gently lay on his arm, rubbing his skin through the cotton of the shirt sleeve. He blinked slowly and when he looked up at me, I knew he was seeing me, but he remained mute and listless, like if I were to bundle him up into my arms it would feel like holding a rag doll, joints only defined by a row of stitches and nothing more. I sighed softly and slipped my arm along the back of his shoulders and when I guided him forward he moved easily with me- if he was sleepwalking I had never seen him do it before, but I would figure it out in the morning. I had heard somewhere that you weren’t supposed to wake sleepwalkers so I simply guided him back down to our room and helped him into bed, gently holding him to me. He closed his eyes after a moment of watching me, and seemed to fall asleep quickly. I did not, a feeling of dread churning over and over in my head so that I couldn’t close my eyes for a second without a flood of old fears coming in; the sound of static, a black body, a beautiful but malicious face framed by silver hair.

Months had passed since any of that. Broken bones had healed and scars were no longer quite so pink and fresh but dying, as it turned out, left a mark on you. For me, that was pretty literal- the long, raised scar that ran down my sternum, dipping down into the soft flesh of my belly, was a reminder of something that I don’t entirely remember happening to me. It had been like a bad dream, I only had shallow impressions, visions that were fleeting as if I were blinking rapidly or it was all happening with only a strobe light to illuminate what was otherwise kept in the dark.

From what I’ve heard, it’s probably best that I never recall the full details. The way Keith looks at me sometimes, when he thinks that I won’t notice, hurts enough as it is.

It’s hot when I wake up, the full heat of Garrison’s summer pouring in through the bedroom window so that I’m sweating and the sheets had long since been kicked to the floor. With damn near perfect timing, Keith pokes his head through the door, grinning lopsidedly as he looks me over. There’s no traces of that strange look he had on last night. He looks as well rested as Keith can look, his hair scooped up off the back of his neck and the rest swept away from his face save for one stubborn flick that fell over his forehead. I must have been staring, because he laughs at me and shakes his head.

“Come stare at me over breakfast, at least. Coffee’s ready.” He says, leaving the door open and I listen to him pad down the length of the hallway. The floor doesn’t creak once and I don’t know if I’m relieved or all the more tense for it.

It’s been slow going recently. The hellrift is almost entirely dormant which meant we hadn’t had a job in a week now, although that single job hadn’t been a walk in the park. We don’t often botch jobs, but sometimes things aren’t all that predictable when it comes to the supernatural. We had taken care of it in the end, but not without some aches and pains for our trouble. On the upside of it all, the lack of activity means that Keith and I get to spend our Sunday like a normal couple, playing footsies under the breakfast table as we work our way through our mugs of coffee which Keith still makes so strong it’s like jet fuel. The taste is growing on me. I almost hate to bring up what happened last night. I pin Keith’s right foot under mine and put my mug down.

“Hey, have you ever been a sleepwalker?”

Keith immediately smells a rat, tipping his head aside slightly and leaning back in his chair to consider me. “No, not that I’m aware of. Usually too fucked to get out of bed awake, let alone asleep.”

“You’re foul in the morning,” I laugh and Keith sticks his tongue out at me.

“I’m always foul. Now tell me why you asked me that.”

“... I found you in the living room last night, just pacing back and forth.” I admit, reluctantly, because frankly Keith has been through enough already and I don’t want to cause him any more distress. What happened with Bezaliel dug deeper into him than it did me. “You didn’t respond to your name or anything, but you went back to bed without a struggle, so. I don’t know.”

“Mm…” Keith picked at his eyetooth for a moment, turning the information over in his head before he shrugged and wriggled his foot out from under mine. “It might have been a one-off. We’ll keep an eye on it, yeah? I haven’t felt anything weird around the place.”

“Yeah.” I nod and take a sip of my coffee, “yeah, okay.”

Keith smiles at me, rubbing his foot along the inside of my leg before setting down his coffee and bringing his hand up to knead at his bad shoulder. It gives him trouble sometimes, but it’s not so bad in the warm weather. The damage done to his shoulder by the ghoul and all the events that had come after was extensive, to put it lightly. The area is misshapen from the flesh that was missing, and his collarbone had healed, but it hadn’t healed perfectly. It was a weak point which Keith didn’t like to show. When I got up from the table I came around to him, brushing his hand away gently to press a kiss through the warm fabric of his shirt. I feel him sigh more than I hear it, his hand coming up into my hair and I indulge and wrap my arms around him, popping a few buttons of his shirt to slide my hands over his skin, feeling the faint scars that litter him like shrapnel. Keith is not softly built. His skin is firm like the muscle beneath it and his hands are rough from years and years of being wrapped around the hilt of a knife. He shows all the signs of a warrior and I love it, I love him. I had loved him well before I could put a name to the emotion.

Sometimes, you just know.

-

“Is it giving you trouble?” I ask, hours after breakfast, while Keith is sitting on the floor with his notebook in his lap and his hand under his t-shirt, rubbing at his shoulder again. He’s been doing it on and off all day and I wonder if he’s aggravated it somehow.

“Yeah, I must’ve slept funny.” He says, still rubbing in slow, circular motions easily followed through the thin cotton. It’s hot as Hell but Keith for all of his proclamations of not being vain, never goes without a shirt. I’ve only ever seen the extent of the damage during sex and shared showers, but in both situations it’s hard to be focused on the scar tissue. “I’ll just take a shower or something, that usually helps.”

“Come here,” I say, and Keith huffs and groans as he gets up, like I’ve asked of him an impossible task, and then he crawls into my lap and all is forgiven as soon as I have my arms around him. He presses his face into my shoulder as I coast my hands up his back so that I can massage his shoulders. Keith melts in against me, stroking his fingers through my undercut while I push my nose into his hair- and freeze for a moment. His hair smells like something thick and earthy, like tar. It’s not overbearing, not something I would have noticed if I hadn’t buried my face right into the strands, but the smell is very much _there_ , with no explanation as to _why_.

A familiar feeling of dread settles over me. It was the feeling that had permeated my life before meeting Keith, it was the feeling that had blanketed Arus on the night that I died. It was the feeling of something lurking where it shouldn’t. I loop my arms tightly around Keith’s waist, holding him close to me and hope to Hell that I’m simply being paranoid.

-

My alarm goes off at seven in the morning every weekday and Keith I think sometimes contemplates my murder because of it. I search around blindly for my phone to cut the alarm, rolling onto my back which involves dislodging Keith from his role as big spoon, of which there is a great deal of complaint before he scoots down the bed that is entirely stripped of covers, to rest his cheek on my stomach, his hand curling around my hip. I laugh up at the ceiling, ruffling his hair up even more than what sleep had.

“Babe, I gotta get up.”

“Do we really need to pay the bills?” Keith mumbles against me, refusing to budge even as I sit up, so that he’s twisted a little awkwardly. I take him by the shoulders and sit him up right, leaning in to kiss the tip of his nose and laugh some more.

“What’s this _we_ business? You’re a complete freeloader.” I can’t help but tease. Keith is not so proud that it hurts his ego to know that he’s not the breadwinner in the relationship. Still he pouts and wraps his arms around my neck and I love Keith in the morning so much. He’s warm and soft, a little more vulnerable than usual. I push my hands through his hair to smooth out some of the mess I’ve made and he closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “Are you going to let me get up?”

“Do I have to get up as well?”

“No,” I promise, dropping my hands, “but I’ll leave some coffee for you.”

“You’re an angel,” Keith murmurs as I climb out of bed and he flops back down among the pillows. I look over my shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow and he’s quick to grin and clarify; “the non-murderous type, naturally.”

I roll my eyes and lean in to kiss him, laying my hand on his cheek that’s a little red with from the heat in the room. He’s perfectly awake when he kisses me back, parting his lips slightly which makes it almost impossible to not deepen the kiss, so I do-- and I try not to pull away abruptly when I taste tar, heavy and foul in Keith’s mouth. I try not to swallow as I slip my hand away from his face and Keith doesn’t seem to notice a thing, nuzzling into his pillow and closing his eyes to chase sleep down, though I notice that his hand comes up to rub at his shoulder again. It doesn’t sit right, none of it does. No amount of strong coffee can get rid of the taste of tar, either.

I’ve never had a less productive day at work. I’d be better off not being there at all, and the complete silence from Keith only makes it worse. The feeling of wrongness is prevailing and coming down like a hard wave. This is usually Keith’s area, but he seems completely unaware. He can’t taste the tar on his tongue or smell it tangled in his hair, or if he does he’s not telling me about it. I think about calling Allura and asking for her advice, but after an entire morning of staring at my computer screen and not doing much else, making a personal phone call would probably have my supervisor cheerfully string me up by my thumbs. I had barely managed to crawl my way back into my job after the weeks and weeks that I went missing for, recovering from my death and trying to piece everything back together with Keith. So I resolve to call Allura once I get home from work and in the meantime, keep my head down.

It’s a fucking long day.

I pull into my parking spot just after six o’clock, slinging my satchel over my shoulder and loosening my tie as I let myself into my building, pressing the ‘UP’ button for the elevator about a half million times until the doors slide open with a squeal. It rattles a little as it takes me to the third floor but it’s better than taking the stairs in this heat, given that the communal parts of the building are devoid of air conditioning. So the fact that the third floor hallway is cold makes the hair’s on the back of my neck stand up, and the fact that my apartment door is open, even though it’s only by a crack, makes me feel like I’m suffocating again, that strong hand constricting around my lungs and refusing to let up this time.

Making myself move forward is like wading through sleet. I have no weapon and no real idea of what to expect so I press myself up against the wall and carefully reach forward to nudge the door open further. The sun is still out, flooding in through the blinds in the living room to cast lines of light and shadow over what I can see of the walls and floor. I’m holding my breath against my own will and straining to hear any signs of movement- there doesn’t seem to be any. I let myself into the apartment to find that at the very least, the kitchen and living room are empty. The hallway is dark given that it’s windowless, so I can’t see much of anything that might be lurking down there.

“Keith…?” I get no response but I can’t shake the feeling that I was heard, and that I was being watch as well. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s Keith in some form who’s watching me, so I can’t bring myself to go into the kitchen and pick out a knife to arm myself with. Instead I walk as lightly as I can, running my hand along the wall to find the light for the hall, but when I hit the switch nothing happens. It occurs to me that this is extremely staged, a trap laid right out in the open, just for me. And I was going to go against all of my self-preservation urges and walk right into it.

The glass of the light bulb that had been pulled out of its fixture crunches under my shoe and it’s like the gun going off at the start of a race, the gates being dropped, the ring of the bell before a match starts. The bathroom door swings open and before I can react, Keith throws his entire weight into me to slam me up against the opposite wall. It knocks the wind out of me and my head cracks off the wall hard. Keith’s hand fists in the shoulder of my shirt and with strength that he doesn’t normally possess, he throws me to the floor. The glass crunches underneath me but if it cuts through I don’t feel it. I grab Keith by the arm, bracing one leg against the wall I’d just been thrown against and other against Keith’s stomach so I can bodily throw him over me, giving myself enough time to get up on my knees, turning to stop his legs from kicking out at me, trapping his ankles under one leg while I snatched at his wrists to pin them down into the carpet. The scream of frustration he let out was not Keith’s; it was feral and distorted, and if it had ever been human, that was a long time ago. Its fury was tangible and unlike most spirits I’ve encountered, there was no underlying sadness within it. It was pure hate, and it was riding Keith with absolutely no regard for his body.

“Who are you?” I snap, pressing all of my weight into Keith’s wrists until he can’t get an inch of movement from them. I hear Keith’s teeth being ground together and then he snaps his jaw at me like an animal. Black tar oozes up between his teeth and the stench is heavy in the air between us but I resist the urge to gag and recoil. “Tell me! What do you want?”

“Want?” The voice is disjointed from Keith’s body. The lips move but not in sync and not with Keith’s voice- it was there somewhere underneath it all, but over top of it was something cracked and strange and old. Keith’s eyes grew wide, the pupils blown out and I noticed with a sickening twist in my stomach the hematomas blooming over the whites of both eyes, an eighth of an inch at a time. “Want. What do I want.” It tried to laugh. It sounded more like it was shredding Keith’s vocal chords and my concern made me falter- Keith’s heel dug into my stomach and threw me backwards. I caught myself, bracing against the wall and Keith got to his feet again, reaching behind himself in a gesture that was entirely familiar made completely alien. He drew his knife from the sheath at the small of his back, turning it in his hand without the finesse that he usually had, the graceful flick of his wrist made clumsy.

The blade caught in the minimal light in the hallway, filtering in through the open bathroom door which had been almost ripped from its hinges.

The dark eyes staring me down were not Keith’s. The hematoma turned them entirely black, corner to corner. This was not Keith. This was something treating his body like a puppet, and I had to figure out how to get it out. And I couldn’t do that if I was dead, so I needed to figure out how the Hell I was going to subdue him while trapped in my own hallway.

I decide on brute force. I charge him as soon as I have the strength, ducking to drive my shoulder into his stomach to whip him off his feet- we land in a heap on the living room floor and I have to roll away quickly to dodge the knife coming down in my back. Keith can’t stop the arc with the amount of force behind the gesture and the tip of the knife digs into the carpet some inches away from me. I make a grab for it but Keith snatches me by the wrist and I bite back a scream as he twists it in a way it shouldn’t- my bones creak but they don’t break and I twist onto my side to swing my leg around, kicking him in the stomach and then rolling over him, but he won’t let me pin him again, snatching the knife up- he cuts open my forearm and with his free hand catches the front of my shirt, yanking down hard to crash our foreheads together and the room is _spinning_ as I reel back from the assault, struggling to shake it off. I feel the blood running down my arm and drip off of my fingertips, into the carpet.

Of course. I’m an idiot. I blink the searing in my brain back as best I can, raising my arm to look over the long cut, the blood free falling out of it. I’m a dead man. I’m full of dead man’s blood, twice over in fact, and the only upside of that fact is that dead man’s blood gets a pretty severe reaction out of spirits. It’s something about it bridging the gap between their world and ours. It makes them susceptible to pain they wouldn’t normally feel, given that they have no corporeal form.

Whatever has taken hold of Keith seems to realize what it is gradually staining my carpet and he watches me warily, his whole body tense, nearly quivering with it, but he doesn’t channel it into anything but staring me down.

“The body you’re in is full of it, as well.” I point out, speaking lowly and with a level of smugness I don’t really feel, curling my fist slowly around the blood that’s pooled in my palm. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Doesn’t- matter.” Keith’s mouth moves strangely, slightly to one side and again, not matching the words being spoken. Like a video with the audio out of sync. “Just a shell.”

“No he’s not.” I say softly, and then I take a lunge at him, grabbing him with my bloodsoaked hand and I swing him around and slam him up against the wall. He wails in rage, scratching and clawing at my arm and if it hurts him to dig into the bloody cut, he grinds through it, digging his nails in deep but our determination is equally matched. I adjust my grip and try to grab a handful of his dark hair with my free hand but I can barely make a fist before pain shoots through my arm and I can feel my wrist _throbbing_ from whatever Keith had done to it. It knocks the air out of me and Keith boosts himself off of the wall to knock me back to the ground and _bites me_ , grinding his teeth into my shoulder, right through the fabric of my work shirt. I scream, letting it ricochet off the back of my teeth. I grab him by the hair with my arguably better hand and pull him off of me with all of my strength. I don’t let go of Keith; instead I drag him closer to the coffee table and pull him up.

My blood runs down through his hairline and I think if my adrenaline wasn’t up I would be feeling a little woozy from blood loss, but I have a bigger problem immediately at hand. Before I can think, before I can apologize for it, I slam Keith’s head down against the coffee table and he drops without a sound. Out cold. I slump down after a few moments pass and he remains still, running my swollen hand lightly over his cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Keith.”

I can only assume Allura arrives reasonably quickly, having not yet left the city after work, but time moves in strange ways when you’re bleeding a great deal with your boyfriend slumped against your chest, an angry spirit that’s not his own inside of him. When I see her standing in the doorway, horrified, I’m actually pretty surprised to find that it’s not one of my neighbours who came to check out the noise first. That’s Garrison for you. Everyone just minds their own business.

Over the top of Keith’s head I give Allura my best smile and she comes to kneel down beside us, gently taking Keith from me to rest his head in her lap.

“He’s alright,” she assures me after looking him over, running her fingers over his face in that way that she does when she’s leafing through his mind for information. “But he does have company in there.”

“Yeah,” I scoff, pressing my better hand into my shoulder where the bite had managed to break the skin. Allura gives me a tense, apologetic smile and reaches to lay her hand on my head. I feel the faint, tingling surge of her influence running over me. It soothes some of the pain, but it doesn’t do anything to settle my mind. The look on her face tells me that she had also pulled on a few threads. She had seen what had happened, more or less. “Can you help him? Don’t we need a priest or something?”

“Maybe not.” Allura says and I lean back against the coffee table. The blood on my forearm is mostly congealed and drying. “How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. It happened so fast- three days and then this.”

“That’s not so unusual. It’s like any infection- the symptoms don’t always show immediately. What kind of contact has he had with the rift lately?”

“Nothing, not since that job a week ago, although-” God, I am an idiot. I would drop my head into my hands if either of them could handle it right now. “The job was messy, Keith got knocked down hard. He was the one who banished the spirit…”

“... Or at least claimed to?” Allura concludes, sighing heavily as she combs her fingers through Keith’s hair, picking out knots gently and no doubt making sure that he does not wake up until we have some sort of plan on how to help him. “Keith’s always been vulnerable to anything that comes through the rift, moreso after what happened with Bezaliel. It was inevitable that something eventually got in, but I have a feeling that it wasn’t in the conventional manner…”

“You can be possessed conventionally?” I deadpan. There’s still so much about this world of his that I don’t understand, no matter how many books and websites I rifle through. If there’s a new way to do something, Keith seems to be the one who gets to find out about it. Allura smiles ruefully, then carefully eases herself out from under Keith so that he’s lying flat on the floor. He doesn’t wake, even as she rolls his shirt up over his chest. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for an entry point.” She says and something clicks in my head. I gesture for Allura to give Keith back to me, so she sits him up carefully and I make sure he’s securely settled against me before pulling his shirt up to expose his bad shoulder.

His shoulder is covered in spindly black lines, spoking out from one black spot just above what remains of his collarbone, like a spider’s web. They reach down the length of his shoulder blade and peek over the top of his arm. The wound reeks of tar and rot but when I run my hand over the black marks, they don’t smear. They’re like tattoos, set in under his skin.

“Allura, what is this?”

“Where do you keep the first-aid kit?”

“Uh, bathroom. What _is_ this-?” I still don’t get an answer. Allura gets up and disappears into the hallway, returning after a few minutes with the beat up metal case that is mine and Keith’s first-aid kits combined. It’s stocked almost as well as any ER. She drops back down onto the carpet and sets the case aside, flicking the lid open and digging through until she finds a pair of long-nosed tweezers. I stare at her over the top of Keith’s head as she leans over to pick up the knife that had been long since abandoned, still covered in quite a bit of my blood. She sterilizes it, wiping the excess off with a cotton round that she tosses aside. “Allura…?”

“I think there’s something in there.” Allura explains, pressing one finger into the central spot of the markings. Keith shudders but his breathing remains even and slow. “Be ready to hold him still if you need to.”

I realize what Allura’s about to do, so I look away. I hold Keith in my arms and press my face into his hair even though the stench is so bad it feels like my throat is burning. I hear the sick, wet sound of Allura slicing into his flesh and the even worse sound of her sliding the tips of the tweezers into the cut. Keith groans, his head lolling to one side, but still appears to be sleeping.

“Good God.”

“What?”

“It’s a tooth.”

“... _what?_ ” I look up again, and sure enough, held between the ends of the tweezers is, indeed, a _tooth_. It’s old, yellowed and chipped slightly, but it appears to be an incisor that had been pulled out at the root. We both stare at it in pure shock until Keith suddenly coughs, making me jump and Allura grabs him before he falls back and the coughs keep coming. He shoves Allura’s hands off of him and she immediately picks up the knife again, ready to strike if it’s not truly Keith. She has more guts than me. I think I would let Keith kill me before turning a knife on him.

It’s not necessary though. Keith pushes away from us both and crawls over the carpet, spluttering and heaving. His back rolls, arms shaking and then he vomits, thick black tar oozing out of his mouth and down onto the carpet where it disperses like ink and makes the whole room smell of rot. It’s a solid minute of retching and spitting before it seems to be done. Keith lets out a soft, pained noise before rolling over to face me. His eyes are still black rim-to-rim because of the hematoma, but that’s all. Those are Keith’s eyes that meet mine, and they’re filled with about a million questions that I don’t know how to answer.

Keith sleeps uneasily, but it’s still sleep. While he does, Allura cleans up my injuries as best she can while her mind is almost entirely focused on the tooth and the vomit. She theorizes that it was the spirit’s tooth, while it was still human and alive, but honestly I’m not listening. If it’s out of Keith than I want that to be the end of it until Keith is well enough to digest any information Allura has to present. Naturally, she picks up on this train of thought and when I’m patched up Allura checks in on Keith once more and then leaves. I’m too tired to shower, so I go straight to sleep instead.

-

I wake to find Keith on the end of the bed, trying his best to cry quietly so that he doesn’t wake me. It’s late, still dark out, but I always know when Keith is upset- I wake up when he has nightmares, when he’s hurt, anything. Crying is no different, although what’s prevailing is the waves of guilt rolling off of him while he tries to make himself as small as possible. I try not to startle him as I come up behind him, running my hand over his back. He sniffs hard and tries to wipe his face clean discreetly, but he’s far too deep into crying to hide it now and I think he knows it. Keith looks at me over his shoulder, his dark glossy eyes shining. I smile and brush my fingers over his damp cheeks, following up with a kiss to his forehead.

“You should be resting,” I tell him. Keith whines softly against the back of his teeth and presses into me, putting up no fight at all when I lead him back up to the pillows. “You have nothing to feel bad about.”

“I cut your arm open.” Keith sniffs, his hand ghosting down my bandaged arm. “Nearly broke your wrist. I didn’t even know anything was _wrong_ , Shiro, I’m supposed to be the expert in this shit--”

“Keith,” I soothe, pressing my forehead against his. He closes his eyes, his hand sliding up to rest on my neck. “It’s over. If we want to know more, Allura will be able to tell us soon, but if you never want to think about it again, then we can do that as well. Whatever you want, baby.”

Keith is quiet for a moment, his breath fluttering against my lips and his fingertips running over my pulse point again and again. “I want…” He begins softly, then huffs. “I don’t know. A new life?”

“Well, I don’t know if I can swing that,” I laugh and Keith sniffs wetly and my heart hurts. I kiss a trail up along his cheek and temple, his hairline before I can nuzzle into his hair which smells less and less like tar by the hour. Keith wraps his arms around me, his fingers pressing hard into my back which is more comforting than anything else. “But, I think I know what we can do.”

“What?”

“Let’s find a new place. A new apartment, a new neighbourhood. New everything.” I say and now that it’s out in the open it sounds like the best idea I’ve ever had. “This place… I think too many bad things have happened here. So. Let’s move.”

“... Well,” Keith starts softly, “most of my shit is still in boxes.”

I laugh at that, rolling over onto my back and bringing him with me so that it’s easier on my bad arm and my bad wrist to hold him close. He presses kisses along my cheek before pushing himself up on one elbow to look down at me. There’s only just enough light for me to make out his features and he’s still the most beautiful boy I’ve ever laid eyes on, right in this very moment with his messy hair and dark eyes. The hematomas will take a while to heal up.

“So is that a yes? Let’s do it?”

“Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” I see the flash of his grin in the low light and then he leans down and kisses me and I love the way he goes soft around the edges like this. I used to imagine kissing him would be hard- not _difficult_ \- but hard like a crashing, crushing of mouths, a frenzy. Instead he kisses me like he loves me, has from the start, a soft brush of rough lips over mine like he’s trying to convey to me all of his sweetest feelings. It works. In all of the chaos that has become my life since meeting him, one thing is incredibly clear to me at all times: Keith loves me, and I love him.

That’s all that it takes to get through nights like this one.

**Author's Note:**

> BOY. This fic was interesting to write! I uhhh, went over the word count. A little. But ily yosh so it was my pleasure.  
> Shiro has a very different internal voice to Keith. For one, he said 'fuck' once in this entire damn fic!! And I guess I found him to be more subdued and the confidence he shows (or that Keith sees) tends to get undermined. But he loves his boy and they made it out okay!  
> I can't believe I managed to write a possession story in juuuust under 6000 words.  
> but then again, this story was less about the possession and more about the feelings.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! It's good to be writing again!!  
> Kudos, comment, let me know what you think!!  
> Love you guys :*
> 
> OH and. Commissions are currently closed, but keep an eye on [my blog](http://stickywrites.tumblr.com) because that will eventually change. You can also check out ways to support my work in other ways. wink wink


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